


(Really/Not/So) Okay

by htbthomas



Category: Dead To Me (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Levels of Language and Angst, Developing Relationship, F/F, First Kiss, Flashbacks, Healing, Mentions of Pre-Canon Emotional Abuse, POV Judy Hale, Post-Season/Series 01, Pre-Canon, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21626890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/htbthomas/pseuds/htbthomas
Summary: "I'm so sorry.""It's okay," Judy says, and she means it this time more than she ever has.
Relationships: Judy Hale/Jen Harding
Comments: 14
Kudos: 167
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	(Really/Not/So) Okay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silent_h](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silent_h/gifts).



> Thank you to Gammarad for the beta!

"Don't say that!" Judy says.

"I'll fucking say it if I want to!" Jen shouts back, and Judy flinches. Jen's face crumples a little. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Judy says quickly, automatically. 

"I'm trying to be less of an asshole, really." Jen lets out a self-deprecating laugh and turns away. "I promised Charlie."

"I know, I know..." Judy's hand reaches out to comfort, but she stops, the hand hovering in mid-air.

Jen doesn't turn back, eyes staring toward the pool where Steve's body floats, but in that unfocused way where she's not really seeing anything. Not hearing anything.

Judy's hand drops.

⁂

Judy's mother's arms wrap around her, starting to rock her slowly back and forth. "I'm sorry, baby. So sorry."

"It's okay," she says, her voice small and muffled. She's learned to say this, anything else means that the warm arms will go away. The sting of the words—the words before—is already fading. It's not her mother's fault that she's so stressed, that Judy is in the way.

"It's just—the house is so messy and there's never time to clean it. I can't clean up after everybody, and if you would just stop leaving your toys all over the stairs I wouldn't yell at you for it..."

"I know, Mommy, I know," she says quietly, and the arms stay wrapped around her. Her mother keeps talking, complaining about her day and all the ways her life is so hard, and how if Judy would just be a good little helper then everything would be easier. The words turn into unintelligible murmurs and Judy closes her eyes, snuggling into the warmth. All too soon, it will be gone again. Until the next time Judy messes up.

⁂

The shovel hits the ground, hard, and Judy jumps. "Oh my god!" she yelps, then presses her lips together hard. They can't be seen out here, can't be heard. She breathes out, "You—"

"Just about gave you a fucking heart attack?" Jen keeps her voice down as well. "Sorry. This ground's hard as a bitch to dig into."

"It's okay." It is. Jen's tired, they're both tired, they just spent the last couple hours putting the body into a tarp and draining the pool and driving out to the boonies to dispose of it. Plus, Jen killed a man tonight, which is really draining. Judy should know.

"Maybe we should—" Jen wipes an arm across her sweaty forehead.

Judy crosses her arms and leans into her shovel, glad for the rest. "Should what?"

"Just dump him here. There's no way in hell we're going to bury this prick six feet deep and get back, clean up, refill the pool... all before Charlie and Henry wake up."

She's right. "Yeah," Judy agrees, biting her lip. "But..."

"But what?" Jen snaps.

The tone makes Judy stiffen. "Never mind." She turns away toward the car, hefting the shovel.

"But _what_?" If the tone was harsh before, it now has a knife's edge.

She stops, not turning around again. "But maybe... they'll find the body here, or predators might drag it, uh, somewhere that people will see it. The, um—" She hesitates, then swallows and presses on. "The bullet is still inside the bo—I mean, inside him, right?" 

There's a slight pause, then, "Fuck." Jen sighs and Judy can hear the sound of Jen's shovel dragging against the ground as she pulls it upright again. 

"I could," Judy says, turning now, "finish it for you, I do, kinda, owe you." 

Jen's face goes still. Then she smirks, a bitter sort of smirk. "Yeah, you kinda do."

⁂

Judy passes through the foyer, then stops, does a double take. She looks down the hall, around the corner, even behind the door. "Uh, Steve?" she calls out toward the study, "what happened to my painting?"

"What?" he calls back. So she pokes her head in to see him typing away at his laptop, one earbud dangling. "Did you say something?"

"Yeah, um." She tilts her head back toward the front door. "My painting. It's gone. Did you... move it?"

"Oh, yeah," he says, still focused on his screen. "I took it to the gallery." He puts the earbud back in, barely pausing in his work.

"Oh," she says in a small voice, knowing he can't hear her. She was proud of that one, happy, the first thing in her life to spark any joy at all since they'd lost the baby. A little girl with a hole for a heart, just the way she's felt for days, for weeks even. They are finally trying again; Steve is sure it was just a fluke, just a bit of bad luck. But she doesn't want to forget this little girl. She loves her just as much as she will any future baby.

Steve looks up after a while and starts a bit. "You're still here?" he asks, perplexed. "Is it the painting? It didn't, you know, _fit_ with the rest of the house. Sorry," he tosses off before going back to his work, this time starting up a video chat.

"It's okay." Her voice is even smaller this time.

⁂

Detective Perez looks between the two of them, with a little more scrutiny on Judy than Jen. She spends another long moment fixed on their clasped hands. Judy can only imagine what she's thinking. How is the woman whose husband was killed, even if by accident, managing to tolerate the other woman's presence, let alone holding her hand? Judy doesn't know herself. When Jen's hand slid over during the detective's questions, Judy hadn't fought it. In fact, she'd gripped it tighter.

Perez sighs and shakes her head. "And you're sure he didn't tell you anything about where he was going." It's a flat, frustrated statement rather than a question.

"I didn't even know he was going until he was gone." It's the truth. Jen squeezes her hand harder, whether in thanks or in warning, Judy's not sure. "He wouldn't have told me anyway, not after he discovered I gave all that evidence to you guys." That's probably also true, but he probably would have killed her first. She squeezes Jen's hand back, definitely in thanks. She saved her life.

"Oh yeah, he's long gone," Jen agrees. Which is absolutely true. It's impressive how calm Jen sounds now, compared to a couple weeks ago when they were frantically scrubbing the pool deck of all traces of blood.

Perez lets out an exasperated breath. "Well, if you hear anything, see anything, let me know." Before she turns to walk back to her car, Judy can see the way she's assessing both of them.

They're both silent until the car is well up the street and around the corner. "Fuckin' cops," Jen says, finally dropping Judy's hand. "Good for nothing at all."

"She tried her best, you know," Judy says, not sure why she's defending Perez other than raw instinct. "It's not her fault they couldn't solve Ted's case."

Jen lets out a short bray of a laugh. "Yeah, it's yours."

Judy flinches a little, waiting for the dismissal she's been expecting since the moment she patted the last shovelful of dirt onto Steve's unmarked grave. But she doesn't deny it. She's never wanted to, not from the very beginning. That was Steve's fault.

"Actually, it's Steve's," Jen corrects with a shrug, echoing Judy's thoughts. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Judy says, numbly, not sure why she's still being allowed to stand here, to keep a tenuous hold on the person she cares about more than anyone in the world.

⁂

When Judy comes to, Steve is hovering over her bedside. Her hand feels warm clasped in his, and there's the sound of beeping and general activity from somewhere close by. Another voice is speaking, one she doesn't recognize through the fog of pain and exhaustion. "...even a few more weeks, the fetus might have been viable."

She moans at that, squeezing her eyes shut. Not again. This was the third time. _The third time_. She can vaguely remember feeling woozy this morning, and clutching at the edge of the dresser with her hand, but then only darkness, and waking up in this hospital bed.

"Judy?" Steve asks, voice threaded through with worry. "How are you feeling?"

Feeling? This is the one she thought was going to last, the third time, the charm. This is the painting she thought she wouldn't need to paint, the child who would run laughing through the house and fill all the clean white spaces with messy love. "Heartbroken," she whispers.

"We'll try again," Steve says. "We can, can't we?" he directs toward the doctor.

"Of course. There's no reason to believe you won't be able to carry the next pregnancy to full term."

Belief. That's all she has. "Thank you," she tells the doctor.

The doctor nods. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"It's okay," Judy mouths, though she knows she's anything but.

⁂

Judy takes a sip of wine and settles herself on the pool chair. The waters sparkle blue in the moonlight, and for the first time in months, she can look at the pool without imagining Steve floating face down in it. She glances over at Jen, who is also staring thoughtfully in the same direction. The police stopped asking questions a couple months ago, stopped looking for him weeks ago.

The guesthouse still stands empty, a painful reminder that Judy isn't really part of the family again, only a secret keeper than Jen can't afford to let out of her sight. But she's glad for anything she can get, if it means that she can be near them. Even on this six-month anniversary of the day she told the truth about Ted, finally. She wonders if Jen realizes what day it is.

"I'm sorry," Jen says from her own deck chair, the last thing that Judy ever expected her to say. "Sorry to drag you into all of this." She starts to say 'it's okay' as she always does but Jen continues over her, still looking out over the water, "I know you didn't have to lie for me, but you did, just like you did for Steve, and that makes me the worst kind of asshole. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," she says, and she means it this time more than she ever has. "It really is."

"No." Jen's face hardens as she turns, bringing her legs over the side to face her. "It's not." She sets her wine down on the table between them. "Okay, yeah, what you did was shitty, but it was an accident, and you would have turned yourself in except for that asshole. But I did something shitty, too, and I was too big of a fucking coward to tell anyone."

Judy sets her wine down, too, and comes to sit beside Jen. "No, no, you're not a coward, you were right to be scared. What if the police didn't believe that it was self-defense? What if some of Steve's Greek buddies decided to hunt you down for that money I gave you?" Judy tentatively puts an arm around her, and when Jen doesn't shrug it off, she pulls her in tighter. "You did the right thing."

"Maybe," Jen says in a quiet broken voice, and Judy hates to hear her this way. Hates that she and Steve wrecked Jen's life so much that the effects will be felt for years, maybe even the rest of her life. "But you know what I think about sometimes?"

"What?"

"If Steve hadn't forced you to lie, if you had turned yourself in, and I never knew you except as this bitch that killed my husband and was serving time for involuntary manslaughter, I..." She's silent for several long seconds, and Judy braces herself for the rest of the sentence. "...I don't think I could take it. I'm glad for what happened."

As soon as the words are out there, Judy feels a rush of truth to it, the very sentiment that she wasn't allowing herself to feel, to think, because it was so awful. She lets out a gasp of relief.

And then Jen's mouth is closing in on hers, kissing her with all the pent-up pain and overwhelming feeling that Judy's been fighting against for too long. She gives back as much as she gets, burying her hands in Jen's hair and pulling her down onto the deck chair. She's not sure how one kiss can communicate all the love and longing she has for Jen, but she's sure as hell going to try.

When it ends, too soon, Jen swipes a thumb across Judy's reddened lips, smiling a little. "Sorry. I just... I had to."

"It's okay," Judy says, pulling her back on top of her. "Oh my god, it's _so_ okay." And she doesn't let her go again.


End file.
